Hillary Clinton Faults Obama for ‘Stupid Stuff’ Policy

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s effort to show differences with President Barack Obama, which began with the release of her book in June, reflects a new political reality. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton is taking on
President Barack Obama with the same issue he used against her
in the 2008 Democratic primary: foreign policy vision.

Obama lacks a specific doctrine, according to an Atlantic
magazine interview with Clinton, the unannounced presidential
candidate who is leading Democrats and Republicans in 2016
polling.

“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘don’t do
stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Clinton told the
Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, also a Bloomberg View columnist, in
reference to the way Obama and his aides describe his approach
to foreign policy.

That’s a “political message” and “not his world view,”
she said.

Clinton’s effort to show differences with Obama, which
began with the release of her book in June, reflects a new
political reality. The hard-line policies that hurt her with a
war-weary Democratic base in 2008 aren’t as significant now that
polls show the party is unified behind her.

It also has become necessary for Clinton, Obama’s first
secretary of state, to draw contrasts as his approval ratings
have cratered. Thirty-six percent of Americans approve of
Obama’s handling of foreign policy, and 48 percent disapprove,
according to a CBS News poll conducted July 29 to Aug. 4.

Testimony Reversal

Clinton’s criticism is a reversal from her 2009 Senate
confirmation testimony, in which she embraced as her own an
Obama vision that was conspicuously lacking specific principles.

In the Atlantic interview, Clinton said Obama is
“thoughtful” and “incredibly smart,” while he was
“cautious” after assuming office amid the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the worst economic downturn since the Great
Depression.

Clinton emphasized the importance of containing jihadist
groups in the Middle East that she said “can affect the United
States” because they are “are driven to expand” and oppose
Western countries.

She drew a distinction with Obama over the policy in Syria,
where civil war erupted in 2011. As Secretary of State, Clinton
advocated for providing training and equipment to moderate
rebels of the Free Syrian Army battling President Bashar al-Assad. Obama resisted.

Vacuum Filled

The Islamic State extremist group, an al-Qaeda breakaway
organization, has since made military gains and declared a
caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.

“I know that the failure to help build up a credible
fighting force of the people who were the originators of the
protests against Assad -- there were Islamists, there were
secularists, there was everything in the middle -- the failure
to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now
filled,” Clinton said in the interview.

Clinton, using as an example tensions between China and its
Southeast Asian neighbors over the South China Sea, linked
success in U.S. foreign policy to economic advancement at home.

“If you don’t restore the American dream for Americans,
then you can forget about any kind of continuing leadership in
the world,” she said.

“Americans deserve to feel secure in their own lives, in
their own middle-class aspirations, before you go to them and
say, ‘We’re going to have to enforce navigable sea lanes in the
South China Sea,’” Clinton said.

Clinton has said that she’ll make a decision on a
presidential campaign by the end of the year.